Last plaintiff settles in priest abuse trial

Victim says abuse began when he was in eighth grade

By VANESSA HO, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, May 18, 2009

The last plaintiff in a rare sexual abuse trial against the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese settled his case against the church Tuesday night for $700,000, hours after emotionally testifying about his abuse before jurors.

"For someone who had kept this bottled up for 35 years, this trial was a significant event," said one of the plaintiff's attorney, Michael Pfau, who had brought the case to trial on behalf of two men abused by their priest.

Pfau said the trial had been cathartic for both men.

"I think the ability to tell their story, be apologized to by a man they hadn't seen for 30 years, and have the church admit they made mistakes is something (we non-victims) can't understand," he said.

The plaintiffs in the case -- the first sex-abuse claim against the Archdiocese to go to trial -- had alleged that the Archdiocese knew, or should have known, that the priest was an abuser in the late 1970s.

The first plaintiff settled with the Seattle Archdiocese on Monday for $550,000.

The priest, Patrick O'Donnell, testified last week that he molested at least 30 boys, including the two plaintiffs, during his 15-year priesthood. Most of that time was spent in Spokane, where church leaders knew he was a sexual predator, as they bounced him among parishes and repeatedly sent him into treatment.

In 1976, the Spokane bishop learned that O'Donnell was molesting a 14-year-old boy there and quickly sent him to Seattle for sexual-deviancy treatment. Someone arranged for O'Donnell to live at St. Paul's parish in Rainier Beach for two years, where the priest continued to assault boys, including the plaintiff.

On Tuesday, in tearful testimony laden with long pauses, the last plaintiff told jurors how he had been an eighth-grade boy from a devout Catholic family when O'Donnell befriended him. He said the relationship soon evolved into abuse in which the priest sexually touched his victim during boating trips and later assaulted him on overnight trips.

"It hurt. I don't know how long it was (going on for), but I just wanted it to stop," said the man, now a 44-year-old jewelry company manager, as he wept while recalling one of several times he was abused.

"He told me everything would be OK, and that it was just between him and me, and nobody else needed to know."

He described how O'Donnell, who ran a teen club at the church, first abused him on O'Donnell's boat during a trip on Lake Washington.

"He came into the cabin, and he came up behind me and grabbed my genitals, and pulled my pants down," he said.

Later, after O'Donnell left the parish, he invited the boy and another boy to visit him in Spokane. "(My mother) said, 'Oh, Father O'Donnell has invited you guys to the lake. That sounds like fun, don't you think?'" the man recalled.

But after he and his friend took a bus to Spokane, O'Donnell took the boys on a boat trip, and then sexually assaulted the plaintiff in an attack more violent than his previous assaults. When it was over, the victim recalled how he had gone the bathroom, crying, and then waited until his abuser had fallen asleep before returning to bed.

It would be the first of two trips the boy made to the priest, and the first of two similar assaults.

Seattlepi.com is not identifying the man, because it usually does not name victims of sexual assault.

Earlier testimony showed that O'Donnell had abused the other plaintiff in the Spokane area in the company of another child molester, a Boy Scout leader who later killed himself during a police investigation into his crimes. The victim recalled how he and the priest had slept in one bed in a cabin, while the Boy Scout leader and the other boy were in another bedroom.

The man said he never told his parents or anyone else about the abuse, because the abuser was a priest and he was worried that no one would believe him. It wasn't until 2005, after the man read newspaper stories on O'Donnell, that he told his wife of many decades what had happened.

"I thought I was the only one that was being abused," he said, crying. "I didn't know there were others."

The case -- plagued with memory lapses, deaths of key witnesses, and 30-year-old allegations --had been an examination of how the local Catholic church has dealt with clerical sexual abuse in the past.

It summoned two former top leaders to the witness stand -- including Raymond Hunthausen, the former renowned local archbishop -- where they described the secrecy that once surrounded child-molesting priests and belief that they were treatable and worthy of second chances.

Hunthausen and his former aide denied knowing anything about O'Donnell's past during his time in Seattle, but apologized for their mistakes in how they had handled abuse in the past.

The case originally started with four plaintiffs, two of whom settled before the trial began earlier this month. Pfau said his clients had already received sizable settlements from the Spokane Diocese.

"It really wasn't about the money," he said, adding that the proposed settlements amounts between the parties before trial weren't that far apart.

"There was something in finally being able to testify and tell their story in front of representatives of the church -- it changed things," he said.

Earlier in the trial, Hunthausen had testified that he believed that O'Donnell was "in good standing," because the priest had been sent by Hunthausen's friend, the bishop of Spokane.

O'Donnell testified that he had showered with boys at the Connolly Center gym at Seattle University, swam naked with them, and molested boys on his boat and in a cabin. The Spokane Diocese stripped O'Donnell of his ministerial faculties in 1986, after which he worked as a psychologist in Bellevue.